Dear Fellow RPCV,

Peace Corps was a life changing experience for me and I wish to give back
by using my experience and abilities as a photojournalist.

I have entered a proposal to an online competition calling for
photographers to name their “Dream Assignment.”

From March 3 to April 3, 2009, the ideas will be open to a public vote. The
Top 20 ideas with the most “pics” coming out of the vote will then be
judged by an expert panel, who will select the winner based on the
originality and creativity of the photographer’s idea. The panel will
also take into consideration skill and experience.

Go to the following url to vote for my project:
http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/richs85/making-peace-with-the-world-peace-corps-at-50/

Erica Burman from the National Peace Corps Association posted this on
Facebook about my project:Erica Burman thinks that RPCV Richard Sitler has
a powerful idea for the Peace Corps community: http://tinyurl.com/datbp2
Can you help make it happen? Vote!

Forward this to your friends and colleagues.

Thank you for your support,

Richard Sitler (JA 00-02)

See my work at www.richard-sitler.com,
http://www.lightstalkers.org/galleries/s/t86lhatbbgvsfneu3wcx and
http://www.lightstalkers.org/galleries/s/mva2r9gbgbiuhfe3xken
also support my project here:
http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/making-peace-with-the-world

(via latimes.com)

Janet Jagan, a Chicago nursing student who became Guyana’s first white and first female president decades after immigrating to the region, died Saturday. She was 88.

Jagan died at the country’s state-run Georgetown Public Hospital of an abdominal aneurysm, according to government officials.

In 1963, Time magazine called her “the most controversial woman in South American politics since Eva Peron,” partly because she was a “strident Marxist” who many believed was the “brains and backbone” behind her husband’s leftist government.

Her husband, Cheddi Jagan, a Guyanese descendant of Indian immigrant sugar-plantation workers, was premier of what was then British Guiana.

“I’m an activist,” she told the magazine, denying that she was overly influential. “People either hate me to infinity or love me to death.”

She was a 77-year-old recent widow when she succeeded her husband as the country’s president in 1997. On his deathbed, he reportedly asked her to “carry on.”

What will this Act do?

The Kennedy Serve America Act will:

• Expand opportunities for people to serve at every stage of life.
• Use service to meet specific national challenges. Put service to work to solve our most pressing challenges, such as tackling the dropout crisis and strengthening our schools; improving energy efficiency; safeguarding the environment; improving health care in low-income communities; expanding economic opportunities for low-income individuals; and preparing for and responding to disasters and emergencies.

I. Ask Many More Americans to Give a Year to Solve Specific Challenges: Building on the success of AmeriCorps, the legislation will create new, effective “Corps” focused on areas of national need. It will ask 175,000 Americans to give a year of service through these corps as part of a new national commitment to solve these challenges, expanding the number of national service participants to 250,000.
II. Increase Opportunities to Serve by People of All Ages:

• For Students, Increase Service Early in Life: Service early in life will put more and more youth on a path to a lifetime of service. The legislation will improve opportunities for young people in low income, high-need communities to engage in service to improve their own communities.
• For Working Adults, Encourage Employers to Let Employees Serve, by establishing a tax incentive for employers who allow employees to take paid leave for full-time service.

• For Retirees, Value Their Skills and Make Service Work for Them. Many retiring citizens are ready, willing, and able to be involved in service and have skills the public needs, as evidenced by those who already serve through the current Senior Corps Programs. The legislation will build upon the existing framework and enhance incentives for retirees to give a year of service through the new Corps, and will establish “Encore Fellowships” that help retirees transition to longer-term public service.
• For Americans of All Ages, Increase Volunteering. Not all Americans can make a significant time commitment to service, but many volunteer in other ways. The legislation will expand the volunteer pool by establishing a “Volunteer Generation Fund” to help nonprofit organizations recruit and manage more volunteers.

III. Support Innovation in the Nonprofit Sector: Social entrepreneurs who have launched innovative nonprofit organizations such as Teach for America and Citizen Schools in Boston are experimenting with new solutions to pressing problems. The legislation will recognize and support the role of effective social entrepreneurs in solving our national challenges:

• Establish a Commission to study and improve how the federal government, nonprofits, and the private sector work together to meet national challenges effectively.
• Apply Effective Business Strategies to the Nonprofit Sector, by establishing a network of “Community Solution Funds” that are basically venture capital funds to help the nonprofit sector seek talent and put it to work.

IV. Improve and Expand International Service and America’s Respect in the World
Support for Short-Term International Service Opportunities: We must expand the Peace Corps so more Americans can provide critical assistance to people across the globe while promoting America’s international standing. But many skilled Americans are unable to give two years. The legislation will strengthen the current “Volunteers for Prosperity” program, which coordinates and supports short-term international service opportunities for skilled professionals to serve in developing nations.

Did you know that T-Pain was going to Guyana? But then didn’t because of threats to his life? To make matters worse, he is now being sued for cancelling the show! Apparently this elevates the rapper to baller status, considering I found the following article on BallerStatus.com:

T-Pain Sued Over Guyana Concert Cancellation

Posted on March 24, 2009, words by Miles Bennett

T-Pain was slapped with a lawsuit Monday (March 23) in a Florida court, regarding his cancellation of a major concert in Guyana last month after he allegedly received kidnap and death threats. According to the Miami Herald, Hits and Jams Entertainment (the promoters behind the event) accuses 23-year-old T-Pain (real name: Faheem Najm) of making outrageous demands — including a private jet, FBI protection, and a phone call with the country’s president. The company said they paid the Auto-Tune king a $75,000 advance, but was a no-show, following reports of death threats. Hitz and Jams says T-Pain was scheduled to headline the Republic Day event on February 23. They said they provided his camp with more than a dozen airline tickets, including seven in first class, in addition to “four-star hotel or better” accommodations, and several other rider demands. However, three days before the show, David Abram of Pain’s Chase Entertainment told promoters he’d been “advised by a credible source associated with T-Pain’s camp that T-Pain should not ‘come’ to Guyana because he would be killed or kidnapped because Hits and Jams had not paid their ’street guys.’” While the suit states that the Pain’s camp offered to return the $75,000 advance, Hits claims it wouldn’t “remedy the disappointment to the Guyanese fans.” Hits are seeking at least $5 million for breach-of-contract against T-Pain and his Nappy Boy Touring company, citing both libel and defamation counts against all the defendants, including Abram. In response, Abram told the Herald: “It was a legitimate security threat. Chase, T-Pain’s management company, did not want to put the artist in ‘harm’s way,’ ” Abram adds. “We feel horrible about not being able to play the concert,” he added. “We are going to do what needs to be done to make this right with the promoters They’re a good company. We’re a good company.”

(via Idealist.org)

I wrote on The New Service blog today that national service is a popular way to give back. More than that, it is effective and cost-efficient. It’s expanding the human resource capacity of nonprofits, and providing many people with much needed bridges into meaningful career paths.

To find out if your senator agrees, read this list of Senators who voted yesterday to allow discussion on the Serve America Act.

The Serve America Act, a piece of legislation introduced by Senators Hatch and Kennedy last fall, is under close scrutiny on the Senate floor this week. If it passes, the bill will:

• Create 175,000 new service opportunities—many of them full-time—in areas of national need, including education, health, poverty and clean energy, building on the success of AmeriCorps
• Link the full-time education award to the maximum Pell Grant award amount in order to keep up with the rising cost of college
• Create a Veterans Service Corps to provide additional support to returning vets and engage them in service
• Provide Encore Fellowships for retirees who commit to longer-term service, building on the model of the Senior Corps Programs
• Create opportunities for young people in low-income, high-need communities to volunteer to improve their own communities
• And take several more steps to allow organizations, social entrepreneurs, and volunteers to meet growing needs in effective ways.

If you want to contact your Senator in support of the Act but are unsure how to do it, read this.

THE WHITE DIAMOND is a film about the daring adventure of exploring rainforest canopy with a novel flying device-the Jungle Airship. Airship engineer Dr.Graham Dorrington embarks on a trip to the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyana, hoping to fly his helium-filled invention above the tree-tops. But this logistic effort will not be without risk. Twelve years ago, a similar expedition into the unique habitat of the canopy ended in disaster when Dorrington’s friend Dieter Plage fell to his death. With the expedition is Werner Herzog, setting out now with a new prototype of the airship into the Lost World of the pristine rain forest of this little explored area of the world, to record and tell this unique story in an extraordinary, feature-documentary film. Written by Herzog, Rudolph

Join the Peace Corps web team as our Information Technology Specialist (Internet), providing front-end web support for www.peacecorps.gov. Be part of our mission to promote world peace and friendship by helping share the Peace Corps story and helping find the next generation of Peace Corps Volunteers.

The Peace Corps website is part of the innovative and award-winning marketing team within the Office of Communications. While we are a federal agency, we don’t feel like one. We operate in a fast-paced, collaborative and creative environment. We are passionate about the work of our Volunteers, and helping inform and inspire the over 5 million website visitors we average a year.

This position will help evolve our successful website, serving as the webmaster and providing skills in XHTML, XML, CSS, ColdFusion, JavaScript, jQuery, Photoshop, Dreamweaver. Flash is a nice bonus.

Fulltime. Salary up to $94,089.

To Apply: Interested candidates must apply online through Peace Corp’s job site: http://tinyurl.com/netcomspecialist . (Don’t be put off by the clunky third-party interface – everything after that about us is pretty cool. Really!) Be sure to attach your resume and include a URL where your portfolio can be seen.

(via google.com)

The British Embassy said Sunday it has received a new video showing one of five British hostages seized by gunmen from Iraq’s Finance Ministry nearly two years ago.

The footage, which apparently was filmed as recently as last week, was the second videotape to be confirmed in just over a year.

The kidnappers have demanded that the U.S. military release the founder of a Shiite militia group blamed for the brazen abductions, while the British have asked that he remain in custody, according to one official familiar with the case.

The official declined to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

The five Britons — an information technology consultant named Peter Moore and four of his security guards — were seized by heavily armed men in police uniforms in May 2007 from the Finance Ministry. They were driven away toward Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City.

The British Embassy confirmed it had received a tape of one of the British hostages but refused to identify him or provide details on how it received the video.

“This is clearly a significant development and we’ll continue to work for the safe release of all the hostages,” embassy spokesman Sean McColm said.

A British newspaper reported last year that the militia claimed one of the hostages had committed suicide but that was never confirmed.

The BBC said Sunday that the hostage in the video is Moore and that he says the five are being treated well.

(via thefriendlyneighbor.blogspot.com)

Today, the AP reported that the Peace Corps is evacuating its 112 members from Madagascar after political unrest in January produced a president hostage at the hands of a military coup.

This event makes Madagascar the second country this year to directly or inadvertantly remove U.S. personnel from their borders. Earlier in January, Kryzgystan ordered U.S. troops to leave their country and close down its primary military base in central Asia after Kryzgystan accepted Russian economic aid. Kryzgystan was the essential U.S. base for carrying out bombing raids on Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the moment it is unclear whether the Peace Corps will return to the large island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa.